User blog:DraxinniaOfTheLost/SOPA
Ok, yes, this is a copy from my actual blog, but I figure since SOPA actually could affect Wikia, I might as well post is here. You can find my blog at: themaidenofwar.wordpress.com I hope this is how blogs work on wikia...and that it's not just supposed to be about iron fey. If not...oh well... Admittedly, I do very rarely watch the news. I have no wish to see who died this week, or which part of the constitution is being overlooked. It’s not that I don’t care, I just find it extremely depressing. And the reports on politics sound just like a whole bunch of bickering over nonsense. Ember informs me that I probably have a better grasp of politics than most people if this is how I truly see it. Today, however, I heard on the news that they are hoping to pass some law/bill/something or other, that gives them the right to…remove any website found to have pirated information. I agree pirating, which I believe I have the correct definition: the selling of things, gaining money, off the efforts of others hard work, which is bad. Then they updated this to have ability have higher punishments for copyrighted things on the web. A person found singing a copyrighted song on YouTube can have up to 10 years in jail or something ridiculous like that. They are going to have to remove the whole of YouTube to stop this because (and I am not in the least sense exaggerating) YouTube is about 70% copyrighted material. I can’t help but wonder how far they will take this – if they are being as idiotic to jail people covering a song, what will they do next? Get rid of all the roleplay sites that have spinoffs of popular tv shows or books? Get rid of American Idol and the recent success of the X Factor? How about the radio? OK, I know I’m overreacting a little, but if they disallow the other things, it really isn’t fair to let some people have different privileges. Heck, sometimes they don’t even announce the song at the end on the radio! That’s even worse than YouTube – at least there they tell you who the song was done by. How far will they go? Just wondering. Now, if there is one thing I love, love, love to do, it is to look for new singers on YouTube. I usually find these little known artists by people who cover them, or stumbling across a lyrics video. Another thing, lyrics videos are sure to be forbidden as well. I don’t think the companies realize how good these teenagers covering songs, and lyric videos, are. They are really free advertising. I could name a thousand people I would never have discovered without the covers. Kerli, Oh Land, Little Boots, LIGHTS, Florence + The Machine, Within Temptation…the list goes on and on. I have, admittedly, bought few albums, but I have bought many songs from places like iTunes. I would never, ever, have bought those songs, if I hadn’t been able to listen to them several times on YouTube first. So, go ahead, put all your silly little rules into effect. You’ll certainly lose my business. And another thing. Books. Now, yes, it is certainly wrong to go out and blatantly copy a book word for word and then say that it’s yours and make money off it. But what, pray tell, is the matter with spin-offs? As a hopefully-soon-to-be-author (64,000 words by the way) I think I can give my opinion on the matter and not be biased. I would not care if some used my same characters and wrote a sequel to my book, as long as they gave me due credit. My friend and I roleplay out our own spin-off of the Iron Fey books by Julie Kagawa, Draxinnia and Ember and all their misadventures. I would think that other people might like to read this and it annoys me that I can most likely never publish anything with my favorite character ever. Even if the author gave us permission (which I wish you didn’t have to ask for in the first place) the publishing company probably still wouldn’t let us. It’s stupid. Plus, if someone did a spin-off and gave credit to the original author of the idea, I would want to read the original. It’s a way to get books noticed. These people don’t think. And another thing, back to the music subject. Those singers are making tons of money, you cannot tell me they aren’t, still, off of their songs being sold on iTunes, their concerts, their whatnot. Florence + The Machine just did a thing for Chanel at a runway show to boost their slowly growing popularity. They aren’t missing out on anything just because their songs happen to be on YouTube. So, perhaps I have misunderstood, but until then I’m going to be soaking up as much music as I can from all these different singers for as long as I can before it’s all taken away. And when I’m 18 I think I’ll cover a song and post it on YouTube in protest, should these new laws have been put into effect. Which would be a very stupid reason to go to jail, but I don’t really care at the moment. ~Vendett Category:Blog posts